


Lifers

by lunadesangre



Series: Lifers [7]
Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-02
Updated: 2011-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:09:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunadesangre/pseuds/lunadesangre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If you’d told Miguel Alvarez, six years ago, that he would end up</i> living to see Ryan O’Reily smile, <i>he’d probably have laughed at your face. Or punched it in. Still, here it is. Here they are.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself when I started writing this that I wouldn't post it until it was completed. But I write so slowly it's been more than a year, and really, fuck it. The way I see it, with this pairing, unfinished things are better than nothing.

If you’d told Miguel Alvarez, six years ago, that he would end up _living to see Ryan O’Reily smile_ , he’d probably have laughed at your face. Or punched it in. Still, here it is. Here they are. (And he doesn’t know what Ryan is living for, but every time Miguel manages to steal a smile out of him, he can fool himself into thinking Ryan’s reason might have something to do with him.)

Ryan doesn’t smile at first. He doesn’t talk, either. Doesn’t do much of anything, really.

Miguel watches him, through the drug-induced haze, in the newly reoccupied Em-City, while Torquemada watches _him_. Ryan goes through the routine’s motions like a ghost. Get up, wash, shave, get dressed, go to the cafeteria for breakfast, numbly get a tray and go through the line, vaguely eat something, leave for his shift in the infirmary.

Miguel isn’t sure how it came to be, but the both of them have the same shift. Torquemada doesn’t. So Miguel follows Ryan.

(And maybe, Dr Nathan might have something to do with it. She throws Ryan concerned looks, tries to get him to talk to no effect whatsoever, sometimes bodily drags him by the arm into her office, and Miguel waits, watching still. It never takes long: she always comes out looking more down, and Ryan just as blank. She rubs his arm in comforting motions, the back of his neck, and Miguel even saw her kissing him once, when the door was opened a crack. She might as well have been kissing a statue, or a corpse, for all Ryan responded. And often, she throws Miguel concerned looks too, even if they look different that the ones she throws Ryan.)

Miguel is spacing out, and too quiet too, and he knows it’s suspicious, that the staff probably worked out Torquemada is keeping him high, but no one mentions it, no one tries to stop it, and things keep going as they are. Miguel goes through the motions like Ryan does. He follows Ryan back when they’re done, and Dr Nathan watches them go, Ryan not seemingly seeing anything, and Miguel watching him.

Torquemada has the afternoon shift, and spends all of lunch talking to Miguel about...things, he guesses. He doesn’t listen, and the words don’t make sense anyway. Ryan blankly pushes things around in his tray and apparently doesn’t really see Beecher in front of him, trying to get him to talk and looking like he would like nothing more than to take Ryan’s spoon and feed him like a recalcitrant three years old – but Miguel does, watching still, and feels a twinge of...something, through the haze. He guesses Beecher’s paternal instincts are roused, like they were with Cyril sometimes, seeing Ryan slowly self-destruct like that. He _knows_ that’s not what Ryan needs. Except he doesn’t know what Ryan needs.

(Ryan’s real father...watches too. But it’s not an expression Miguel can read, and anyway, Miguel isn’t sure what a fatherly face is supposed to look like. He sees his own father in the hospital ward or the cafeteria regularly enough, but...somehow he seems more like a scared old man than a father. Just another guy that has been here too long, that still is, still alive, still living with that unnameable fear of everything that could go wrong in the blink of an eye in this place. But Miguel’s father still seeks him out sometimes, to give him a hello-smile, a concerned look, to look for a nod back, a slight smile, a word. Miguel isn’t as out of it as Ryan is, but Ryan’s father doesn’t even approach his son, doesn’t even sit at the same table, even though it should be _his_ job to try to force Ryan to eat.)

Miguel stands up when Ryan dumps his tray, and follows him back into Em-City, ten or fifteen feet behind as always. Beecher exchanges looks with Rebadow and Busmalis and watches them leave. Torquemada glues himself to Miguel like a leech, but not quite touching, and follows Miguel following Ryan, before he finally leaves for his shift.

Ryan spends the rest of the time in his pod, staring at the ceiling. Miguel spends most of his Torquemada-free time staring at Ryan, from his pod or the quad or the railings, wherever he somehow ends up. (Every day, Ryan’s mother, or sister Pete, kidnap him from Miguel’s sight for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Miguel spends that time wondering if he talks with _them_ – it would explain why they haven’t sent him to psych-ward yet, but Miguel doesn’t think about that too much, because then he ends up wondering why they haven’t sent _him_ there yet either, and it stirs up too many fuzzy bad shits in his brain – though he thinks maybe psych-ward with Ryan there too wouldn’t be so bad – but there never seems to be a difference to Ryan’s behavior after he is brought back.)

Ryan’s guys seem like lost little boys, trying to get him to...do something normal probably. To talk. Move. Stop staring at the goddamn ceiling. Read one of his magazines. Do something Ryan-like, really, or even remotely non-ghost-like. By now, they’d probably be overjoyed to see him punch one of them to a bloody pulp, just because it’d be a reaction. They cluster around his pod like a bunch of lost puppies and try their very best at dancing Ryan’s steps, at the very least to keep him safe. They’d all be useless against a direct attack, and it’s obvious they know, that everyone does. The Irish are nothing in Oz without Ryan O’Reily, and everyone can see the Lord of the Fucking Dance is not dancing anymore, not keeping track of anything, just walking through the routine like a ghost.

Still, no one touches Ryan. Maybe it’s just in case. Maybe it’s because everything is still rather fucked up everywhere. Maybe it’s Ryan’s boys’ doing somehow. Maybe it’s wariness of Miguel, somehow always around. (He might be insane, and drugged, and quiet, and somehow stuck with a drag-queen leech, but he took a hack’s eyes out and slit a few throats, and he’s here for life too, now, and he has nothing to loose. And maybe _that’s_ the angle Ryan’s boys are playing, because Miguel sees them sizing him watching Ryan, and if they’re obviously wary of him and there’s always at least one or two around – read to yell or run for a hack maybe – they have yet to do something, _anything_ , about his Ryan-watching.)

Or maybe it’s Torquemada’s doing. He’s the fucking jail queen now, the fucking center of power. He watches Miguel watching Ryan, and he looks amused by it. Gleeful, almost. Through the haze, it makes Miguel sick. ( _I like straight boys the best._ ) Through the haze, Miguel hates him.

Still, he doesn’t stop. He’s not sure he could, and he’s not sure why. (Why he doesn’t, why he’s not sure and why he can’t.)

After count, after lights out, he watches Ryan go trough his nightly routine. Watches him ignore Meaney’s by now obviously forced chatter and illustrative hand motions as the guy attempts for normalcy. Reports, maybe. Just in case.

Torquemada watches him watching. Keeps him high, one pill after another, probably keeping track of the effects and counting hours, minutes. (Maybe in case Miguel would try to OD himself if given a supply of his own. Miguel wouldn’t put it past himself to do that, now that he thinks about it.) He doesn’t really try to touch him – or, at least, not too far: no fucking, no kissing, no blow-jobs, not even a simple hand-job, maybe because on some level he knows that if he pushed too far, some last part of Miguel’s pride, battered down by despair and buried under the fog, would _latch out_ , with very probably utterly catastrophic results –, he doesn’t even try to get Miguel to touch _him_ at all. Morbidly fascinated with Miguel swallowing his fucking pills though, yes, and there’s disgusted hatred in Miguel still, making him snatch the damn things with his own hand when the fog is less thick instead of letting the freak push his fingers in his mouth. But besides that, and the occasional fascinated petting when Miguel is too high to bother caring, Torquemada just _watches_. Watches him get high with perverse satisfaction. And watches him get _off_.

And the more _Miguel_ watches _Ryan_ , the less Torquemada tries to touch him. (And the more gleeful he seems.)

It’s only after Ryan is curled up on the top bunk not moving and Meaney has given up and gone to bed too that Miguel starts _his_ nightly routine. Ignore Torquemada, brush his teeth, ignore Torquemada, go to the toilet, ignore Torquemada, get changed for bed, avoid Torquemada’s hands, take the fucking D-tab, avoid Torquemada’s hands. Ignore Torquemada and curl up in the darkest corner of his bed and touch himself while the freak is watching, crooning his name and words that Miguel really doesn’t want to even try to understand. He used to close his eyes and think of nothing but the sensations, but by now the sensations have numbed down – maybe D-tabs aren’t really that effective taken this continuously, or Miguel has just grown immune, it’s a wonder he hasn’t ODed yet – and all he can think about is _Ryan_.

Miguel pretends to fall asleep afterwards, and it’s only after he’s sure that Torquemada is sleeping in the bunk above that he shifts enough to keep Ryan’s pod in his line of sight.


	2. Chapter 2

The routine goes on. Some random guy is stabbed by his drugged roommate, said drugged roommate is dragged away maniacally laughing his head off, and it clears up a pod. Somehow, Meaney gets moved there with a brand new kid the very next day, and Miguel finds himself Ryan’s new podmate.

He stares incredulously when Mineo informs him of it, until the hack barks at him to gather his stuff. Numbly, he does. (On one hand, he’s almost overjoyed to get away from the fucking drag-queen, and rooming with Ryan sounds fucking _nice_ right now. On the other, something keeps nagging at the back of his brain. Something very, _very_ wrong.)

Torquemada is standing to the side, looking too carefully bored to properly manage to hide the glee radiating off him. When Mineo turns his back for a second, to yell...something at someone in the quad, just as Miguel is about to leave, Torquemada slips a little vial full of green pills in Miguel’s pocket. And _smiles_ at him. It seems even that dead eye of his is _twinkling_.

Miguel all but runs out, trying his very best not to let the sudden, overwhelming disgust show. It just hit him, harder than any fucking punch. Harder than any fucking _bullet_.

 _That’s_ what it was: _I like straight boys the best_.

And Miguel has spent all his fucking time watching Ryan. Ryan, who is lost god knows where in that head of his and way too fucking vulnerable right now. And _straight_ , too.

Disgust, hatred and repulsion almost make him choke on his own breath. Toward Torquemada. Toward _himself_. Why the fuck has he been watching Ryan like that? He’s not Torquemada! He’s not Torquemada. God, he doesn’t want to be Torquemada. He _refuses_ to.

He fumes all the way to Ryan’s pod, but Ryan isn’t in it. Miguel dumps his stuff on the bottom bunk, puzzled, and goes to lean on the railing outside, searching.

Ryan isn’t far away; he’s apparently been dragged by his Irish puppies to the nearest table on the second floor, where they’re all attempting to look normal while trying their very best to make him understand something. It’s not working, on both attempts. Ryan just looks tired and slumps his head on his arms on the table, blinking slowly enough that it actually looks like he could fall asleep right there in the open, in one of those fucking ass-killing chairs, and he doesn’t even seem aware of the panicked twitching going on around him at the gesture. Meaney in particular looks like he’s seconds away from having a seizure, and the tall redhead Miguel can’t remember the name of seem almost near tears. Then they notice Miguel watching them, and it doesn’t help the tension.

The redhead gathers himself, standing up so fast his chair falls over, and gestures angrily in Miguel’s direction, babbling something at Meaney. Ryan doesn’t even seem to notice the commotion. Meaney closes his eyes and looks...defeated. He seems to have blanched a little too, and Miguel suddenly feels like some kind of monster, so he looks away, and accidentally locks eyes with Torquemada, staring at him like a vulture from across the quad. The slow self-satisfied smile he gets makes him want to puke. He doesn’t think, seeing too much red, turns around too fast and blindly stalks into the pod, stumbling to the sink, dry-heaving.

He fumbles for the tap, but water doesn’t help, and when Murphy yells “Count!” what’s probably only a few minutes later but feels much longer while trapped in his mind, he’s huddled on the floor, sitting in a ball with his back against the wall and his head in his hands, eyes tightly shut. Murphy has to drag him by the arm to leave him swaying unsteadily next to a blank-looking Ryan when it’s their turn, as no orders to move managed to reach his brain. Miguel has a stray thought all but snickering _psych-ward_ in his head when Murphy throws the both of them a look that definitely says he’s getting really worried about their sanity, and he’s vaguely aware that all of Em-city is probably staring at them. Then Ryan numbly brushes past him to walk into his pod and Miguel blindly follows.

The door locks, and there’s silence. Ryan climbs on his bunk and sprawls, resuming his ceiling-staring. Miguel stops at the door and slides to the floor with his back to it, trying to breathe and hold on to sanity at the same time, wondering what _the fuck_ he’s going to do now. He feels Torquemada’s eyes on the back of his neck like a dirty, dreadful wave of something _slimy_ , making him tense and shudder, disgusted and lost.

When the lights go out, he still hasn’t moved. Ryan doesn’t seem to have even _noticed_ his podmate switch.

It’s only an insistent tapping against the glass behind him that gets Miguel moving. (He doesn’t want to be dragged to psych-ward. At least, not without Ryan, he realizes in that instant: because if Ryan is so completely out of it he didn’t even notice that Meaney got replaced by Miguel, and Miguel gets locked away from him, God knows who Torquemada will have moved into Ryan’s pod to get his fucking show.)

Miguel doesn’t look at the hack, getting up and moving towards the bunks, shuddering in disgust, forcing himself to _think_ even as his body starts the mechanical action of making his bed. (He can’t figure out who, but it doesn’t matter, just the thought of any of those fucks so much as _trying_ to take advantage of Ryan makes him want to kill something. Painfully. Preferably Torquemada.)

He puts his stuff on the floor to make his bed, smoothing his sheets, wishing he could smooth out the uncontrollable wave of his thoughts with the same ease. (Just the thought of Torquemada setting _him_ up to do _that_ is making him feel irrepressibly murderous. Or destructive.) Self-destructive, overflowing of despair and self-hatred: he recognizes the feeling, as he pummels his pillow in place. The last time he felt like that, so deeply, he stabbed his hand and slashed his face. (His baby boy, dead because of him.) Miguel’d deserved it – but it didn’t help. It wouldn’t help now, he knows it. He needs to get off that line of thought and figure out some kind of plan, because no matter what he wishes he hadn’t done, he’s here now, in this fucking mess – they both are, thanks to Miguel, and he needs to get them _both_ out.

There it is, his pride, still. It’s _his_ mess and he _needs_ to fix it. He’s fucked up everything else... (Besides Julie, he reminds himself. It could never repay what he owes Rivera, but it had been a right step. His only right step.) ...if O’Reily gets himself destroyed, it’s not gonna be because of Miguel.

But that thought hurts, for some reason Miguel can’t fathom. He doesn’t want to see Ryan destroyed – but the guy is a fucking _zombie_ , what the hell can Miguel _do_? Even if he somehow manages to get rid of Torquemada without getting killed or ending up in solitary – or death row –, he can’t just take Ryan’s spoon and force-feed him. (Can he?)

If only it was as simple as slapping Ryan awake and slitting Torquemada’s throat tomorrow morning... But nothing is ever simple. There’s Torquemada probably watching them like a fucking horny vulture right now, wondering why Miguel hasn’t given Ryan a pill yet, Ryan’s boys probably ready to bang on the glass and point the hacks to their pod at any suspicious move on Miguel’s part – well, at least he can get away with _not_ touching Ryan for the first night, Miguel thinks, that’s a valid excuse, and it gives him time to come up with a plan.

The problem is, he quickly realizes, sitting on his bed staring at his pillow, that he hasn’t been looking at the big picture at all since that fucking meeting with that fucking pendejo of Ruiz. Besides Torquemada and all the goons he probably has to assure his security, and Ryan’s boys, there’s sure to be a lot of other problems Miguel isn’t seeing right now, so completely out of the loop, everything still slightly fuzzy. If only Ryan was in his right mind, he could come up with some brilliant scheme to make them all go away...

Miguel sighs, mind seemingly stuck in a loop, and Ryan chooses that precise moment to start his nightly routine, thumping down on the floor right next to Miguel’s legs, taking off his shirt and dumping it on his trunk, going to the sink to brush his teeth – completely ignoring Miguel’s presence, like he’s been ignoring everyone else’s for...a long while now, probably. Miguel stares at his back trying to remember, slowly coming to realize he’s lost all sense of time. Doesn’t even know what fucking _month_ it is. How many months he’s been wandering about in a daze, sucking tabs off Torquemada’s fingers. _Fucking hell_. He wanted to get lost – be careful what you wish for and all that shit.

Ryan relocates to the toilet and practice makes Miguel avert his eyes with a little jolt, suddenly remembering they’re in the same space now, not across the quad in separate fishbowls like they used to be only yesterday.

When Miguel was still stuck with Torquemada. Who’s probably avidly watching now, still.

Miguel throws himself flat on his bunk, staring at the springs above him. (Okay, a plan. One: Stop fucking staring at Ryan all the fucking time like a fucking freak. Two: Get rid of Torquemada – but that probably can’t really be called _a plan_ , since Miguel has no fucking clue on how to go about it; the fucker is too big a fish for a good old fashioned shanking. Miguel needs information. So, two: Find out the lay of the land. And what fucking month it is. Rebadow, maybe? Miguel hasn’t looked lately, but he’s positive the old guy is still around. He’d probably survive the apocalypse, simply by hiding in a corner or blending with the landscape. Three... Is there any chance O’Reily is faking this shit? For whatever reason... The mick’s mind works in mysterious ways, after all.)

But only one of those to find out.

As Ryan walks back to the bunks, Miguel gets up and bumps into him. Purposely, blocking his way, chest to chest. (He shoves his hands in his pockets to avoid grabbing Ryan and shaking him. Encounters the D-tabs vial, burningly cold in his right pocket. Freezes, slightly wide-eyed.)

And Ryan _looks_ at him.

Almost stares him down, actually. For all of three seconds, face half in the harsh hallway light, he looks like the old O’Reily, and Miguel unconsciously holds his breath, waiting for a sharp comment, a dismissive smartass smirk, something, anything.

But there’s only silence, and Ryan’s eyes are bottomless pits in the darkness, only the reflection on the surface the indication that he’s alive at all. Maybe Miguel is just imagining things. (Wouldn’t be the first time.)

“Hey,” he says, in a breath, testing the water, not knowing how to continue.

There’s a slight twitch of Ryan’s head that could be an acknowledgment – or nothing at all – before Ryan dodges him and climbs back on his bunk. Disappointment wrestles with nerves and despair in Miguel’s guts.

It’s only when he goes to grab his toothbrush that he realizes he’s still clutching the vial of tabs. He stares at it, torn between taking a pill and dumping them all in the toilet, feels watched – Torquemada, the hacks, everyone, Ryan? – refuses to check and shoves them back in his pocket, trying to ignore the trapped feeling _screaming_ for one more, one more little escape for a little while...

Torquemada’s horny triumphant smirk invades his head, downright fucking nauseating.

He falls back on his bunk fully clothed to stop the room from spinning, determined to have some kind of plan in the morning. Wracks his brain for something – ends up half-passing out, tossing and turning the rest of the night, too warm, too cold, trapped between nightmares and hallucinations, not quite asleep, not quite awake. The bunk above him stays too silent and too still.


End file.
